eTextbooks with Kim Lane and Sonja Stewart

eBooks in School Libraries

eBooks in School Libraries

Videogaming in the School Library

School libraries have included gaming stations for recreational, after school use, but now understood a teaching tool. It’s is likely to be rooted in a state or Common Core standard with specific learning goals. Gaming is an virtual and physical world where students learn by doing. The challenges are continual. Feedback is ever-present. Students will iteratively work their way out of failure. They aren’t easy to play. They’re complex and have demanding learning activities. Gaming is great informal learning.

Libraries may be one of the best learning environments for gaming for the same reasons libraries have always been good learning spaces. They are a multipurpose classroom where students can play, think about the playing, independently learn to play or learn from each other.

So librarians as an instructional partner often co-plans with teachers about opportunities for gamification in the curricula which may include the most challenging areas in the course.

There are a number of studies indicating recreational gameplay impacts cognitive process and how that might transferred to other kinds of learning and learning environments. Libraries are collaborative spaces and newer educational digital games accommodate multiplayers with students working cooperative rather than competitively.

A game-like public school in New York City, Quest to Learn, (Q2L) has teachers who are licensed by the Department of Education. Students take required standardized tests. But at Q2L, a team of game designers, curriculum specialists, and after-school mentors work with teachers to design rigorous, engaging, game-like learning environments, including the design of classroom games.

In the article, Video Games as Digital Learning Resources: Implications for Teacher-Librarians and For Researchers by Teddy Moline, Faculty of Education, University of Alberta, Canada showed examples of students being highly self-motivated to play and learn. One teen reported, “You never start out as the master of anything. You have to practice that skill and use it constantly to increase and improve. Another stated that he gained satisfaction from accomplishing goals and being capable of figuring things out on his own.

The teens rarely showed frustration in another study. It was part of the gameplay to solve a task. They found it exciting and imaginative. They trusted themselves. They experienced tension rather than frustration.

Librarians see gaming as a way to formalize learning. Just as librarians understand themes in urban lit and fan fiction can be a launchpad to more classical literature, it is the same with gaming. Gaming help students, as they search for answers to move through the required tasks, maximize inquiry-based learning. In my role as librarian, I teach kids how to formulate questions and investigate thereby creating for themselves new understanding and knowledge. All of these skills are core to gaming.

As positive as gaming is for school libraries, some educators are skeptical because of cost for equipment, software, training and maintenance. Logistics and planning may also be an issue.




Cited:
Quest to Learn: A collaborative effort to design engaging game-like learning environments | Gaming Life
Karen Jensen, TLT on April 12, 2017- Brigid Alverson on April 12, 2017- Travis Jonker on April 12, 2017- Elizabeth Bird on April 12, 2017- Amanda MacGregor on April 11, 2017- Travis Jonker on April 11, 2017- Elizabeth Bird on April 11, 2017- Robin Willis on April 10, 2017- Colby Sharp on April 10, 2017 - http://www.slj.com/2012/12/opinion/the-gaming-life/quest-to-learn-a-collaborative-effort-to-design-engaging-game-like-learnng-environments-gaming-life/

A whole new game: digital games, information literacy and the school library
http://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/gblcompendium/part-2-provocation/a-whole-new-game-digital-games-information-literacy-and-the-school-library/

Opinion: Video games in libraries? A smart move There are a number of studies indicating recreational gameplay impacts cognitive process and how that might transferred to other kinds of learning and learning environments. Libraries are collaborative spaces and newer educational digital games accommodate multiplayers with students working cooperative rather than competitively. Ruben Navarrette - http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/15/opinion/navarrette-library-video-games/

My kids gaming in the library after school. Always the last to leave.

My Flipped Learning Lesson

I usually repeat some lessons a lot. It is usually a one-on-one kind of interaction. I don't discount the need to be repetitive because students really benefit from the quick lesson. But sometimes, I think I could record some of these tips so students could watch them as they need a quick tutorial on something. Google Advanced Search is one of those quick tutorials.


Google Advanced Search

Flipping Digital Learning

From my twitter encounter this week of #flipped learning, I created a magazine on Flipboard with a couple of articles that suggested tools for teachers to use for flipping. One of the two articles offered 54 tools. I thought that sounded pretty comprehensive so I took a look at that. The other had the top 10 tools. I thought that one would be more discriminating. I found both to be useful. I chose another article because it offered help with lesson planning for flipped classrooms. So far, the magazine has help with creating videos, what I should consider before flipping, flipping videos relevance to project-based learning. Lastly, one article offered help for teachers who see the “at home” as quite a hurdle. It stated, "But successful flipping has one big catch -- if it's going to work, the at-home learning absolutely must happen. And teachers have zero control over what happens at home.” Flipped learning is the future, so I’m sure I will be adding to this magazine for months to come.
.

.
.
Click here to view the magazine

Changing Spaces for Changing Learning

This is the library computer lab as it appeared when I first began working at this school in 2007. It is almost unchanged for the length of time I served this learning community. I added a blue seating area about four or five years later. More about this in a moment. I primarily taught students general information gathering skills, how to use information databases, Web 2.0 tools for assignments. I would then walk around the room and monitor their progress and help them troubleshoot their topics. If they had been assigned individual topics, it was an okay arrangement. If they were required to do anything beyond individual work, the area was restrictive.

A few years ago, I changed practically all of the areas of the library. This leisure-seating moved from the main floor into the library. I brought the computer tables closer together to accommodate the additional furniture. This furniture is shown in the following picture.

I was surprised by all the different ways this furniture was used in the lab. Students used it as a way to record video for their projects. Teachers would consult with groups about research projects. Kids who brought their own laptops to school and didn't need the desktop gathered there. Students would plan and divide work responsibilities and all right there in that spot.

Even though this room was not aesthetically at it's best, the seating added more functionality. But I'd like to see the furniture streamlined

I would like to make more aggressive changes to the computer lab so that students could work differently and more collaboratively there. If I had more funds, and $1,000 might be a stretch, but I'd recreate this computer lab featured here. I'd make the old space look more like this because it would expand the number of areas that could be used for group work. I would keep the tables, but I'd like to alter or hack them with a tabletop mounted flat-screen tv.

The new space would allow students to work together in small clusters. Even though each student might be using individual laptops to research different aspects of a topic, one laptop would be connected ia an HDMI cable to the flat screen tv so that everyone in the group could see the work and contributions as they are being developed. The dry erase whiteboards would be used to work out ideas.

Click here for the cost of changing the computer lab space.

Content Curation.

My introduction to curation was happenstance as I stumbled upon Scoop.it and Paperli a few years back. I’d teach kids that content curation was a good way to keep abreast of headlines on their assigned topics such as subsistence farming, world religions, and so forth. I’d introduce curation to explaining to them that it was similar to a museum curator. They’d submit a topic to a curation tool and in turn get a thread of information about that topic. I think for the most part, the students found it to be useful and enjoyed using it. In 2012, that was the extent of our use for it in the library. It was another resource for information.

Fast forward to now, I see that I’m a little behind on how it has evolved and how people are using it.. This week I am having to expand my idea of what new tools can be useful for curating. One article that I found promised 50 Killer Curation Tools. I’ve used tools without thinking of them as curating tools. I’ve taught kids how to use Thinglink, but never presented it to them as a way to curate even though they were gathering resources around a common theme. In a way, it was overlooked opportunity to discuss curation using that tool. I am looking forward to future conversations that are more expansive and progressive about content curation. I’m also looking forward to making clearer distinction between my activities as a content creator versus a content curator.

I’ve decided to use this opportunity to combine curation with ebooks in school libraries. This topic has been so controversial and the trend has had a slow start. I’m curious because I personally don’t read paper books anymore. People have a hard time reconciling my profession as a librarian and using paper books. I understand their confusion. It’s just my personal preference. I don’t think I’m endangering paper versions. My most prolific student readers despise ebooks.

Flipboard is a tool that I’ve used and let fall by the wayside. But this week’s reading for this unit by Aaron Tay has me more than interested in taking a second look at Flipboard. He too is a librarian and he makes a compelling argument as to why it’s a good fit for him professionally. I like the way he outlines his path to Clipboard.

I enjoyed this comic strip highlighting the inability some people have in defining content curation.